This study attempts to discern the nature of the Chinese junk trade during the seventeenth century by examining social, religious and cultural ties among Chinese maritime traders and the influence of these ties on the organization of trade. Based on Dutch, English, Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese sources, it investigates the activities of the Wei brothers in the Tonkin-Nagasaki silk trade from the 1630s to the 1680s. In doing so, it will argue that Chinese maritime networks were developed on the basis of economic, kinship, religious and cultural affiliations embedded in the social and commercial development of the late-Ming gentry society in China, and therefore that the nature of the early modern Chinese junk trade was in essence private and informal. At the same time, it demonstrates that biographical study can be a useful tool for writing history, as it complements the limitations of the approaches defined by the modern nation states.